After two years in Paris, the duo were approached to run a restaurant in Brive-la-Gaillarde, south of Limoges. In 2007 the pair moved to the small city which Robertson described as ‘not particularly Brit-friendly’ also noting that ‘Kyu was the only Asian woman living in town’. 

Robertson reflected on this period, ‘The thing about Nobu Matsuhisa for me is [that he’s] probably the most important chef in the UK in this century. If you think about the Japanese influence on fine dining at the moment, it’s just pervaded everything. You don’t see a single fine dining restaurant that’s not using koji, not using kombu: he was the one who started it. Fusion was kind of a dirty word back then. And his food was 100% fusion, not a fusion of western and Japanese food, but a fusion of Peruvian food and Japanese food. It was very authentic in a way, he was a very proficient Japanese sushi chef before he opened his restaurant. I worked there for three or four years, and it has informed everything I do since then.

What [Kyu and I] did in Brive was we took our influences from Nobu, even using soy sauce was just very rarely used in France at the time and we brought that to the menu and people absolutely loved it.’ 

But the rural setting proved a challenge: getting chefs to leave Paris was near impossible and as such, the low staffing levels left the kitchen running a near-permanent skeleton crew. This made the hours long and the tensions high. To add to the pressure, Robertson and Jeong Jeon were serving food that even in Paris would have been seen as a risk, let alone in remote Aquitaine (now Nouvelle-Aquitaine). 

‘It was just getting harder and harder’ Robertson explains, ‘They were cutting staff and it was impossible to get good staff. We had an idea that we’d save some money, and as Kyu missed her family and I was keen to travel to understand her culture more, we thought we’d open a restaurant in Korea.’

In 2010, Restaurant L'Envie at the Chateau de Lacan was awarded a Michelin star yet despite this achievement, the pair were already decided: they left for Korea. ‘We already had plans to leave and then the Michelin star came.’

Nearly a decade in Seoul taught much. The city had evolved since Jeong Jeon’s childhood and the budgets the pair had planned to use to open a restaurant of their own wouldn’t be enough. Instead they began cooking a kind of casual western fine-dining, steaks and lobsters, in the revolving restaurant atop Seoul Tower. There is a kind of luxury on the more corporate side of hospitality, perhaps it lacks a certain warmth or generosity of spirit, certainly the food lacked a sense of place, though the pair describe the work as ‘cushy’. Kyu worked in pastry while Duncan headed the kitchen, but the food was never the focus of the corporate higher ups and so, after more than twelve years out of Britain, the family relocated to Bristol in 2018. 

On their return to the UK, Robertson explained, ‘This industry is hard if you don’t know anyone. Coming back to Bristol, I look back on it now – it’s just crazy. [We were] coming to a city where we didn’t know any suppliers, know any other chefs or tradesmen to set up the restaurant. I’ve not found coming back to England easy at all.’

Despite the challenges, compounded by the stresses of being new parents, in 2019 the pair opened Bokman, with just one front of house staff member and one other cook. While lockdowns and re-openings caused by the pandemic affected trade, the VAT relief helped and slowly, the duo established the restaurant not only as a benchmark for Korean food in Bristol, but among the better Korean restaurants in Britain. But with Dongnae, change was afoot. 

‘I guess we wanted to do something more contemporary’ Robertson said, ‘It felt like, what they call danjjan-mat (단짠맛), sweet and salty flavour, which is obviously the Korean food everyone knows and loves. Spicy, sweet, salty…we felt that it was almost too easy. This is what everyone’s doing. We wanted to do something different. In Korea now what the young chefs are doing is really coming away from that. It’s much more what they call siwonhan-mat (시원한맛).’ 

Siwonhan in food roughly translates as cool, freshness or refreshing. The pair wanted to move away from the spicy and sweet flavours and ferments that marked Bokman, and continue to feature heavily in Korean menus, to something fresher, more delicate. They’ve achieved this in spades at Dongnae. Opting for cleaner flavours has proved a challenge, with some diners finding it hard to understand at first. But Dongnae has already won plaudits from the likes of Tim Hayward of the Financial Times and the Good Food Guide, recognising the delicate craft and quiet ceremony that goes into each dish and every well-placed accompaniment. 

Robertson argues there are two kinds of chefs, the ‘artist’ and the ‘artisan’. The former create change and push boundaries while the latter prepare the same foods for more than decades, for generations. ‘I call it ‘folk food’: a traditional, unassuming location, with someone doing something very simple, really well. For me that’s much more magical than someone who’s making new dishes every day.’ 

As Dongnae continues at its quiet and considered pace, the roster of great Bristolian chefs has done well to count these two among their company.